strikes me as a fairly cheap linguistic trick—you could deploy it with equal efficacy regardless of whether there can meaningfully be said to be “time” before the Big Bang. Now, the fact that it is a linguistic trick itself illustrates a sort of “ways words can be wrong” meta-point, which could be valuable in unrelated circumstances, but your other analogies are much better.
It isn’t just a linguistic trick: it is pointing out that there exist ways in which a dimension can end, even if the particular way is nothing like the other.
Are there any relativistic space-time geometries which would have the beginning of time broadly resembling one pole of a hypersphere? Just wondering how far the analogy could be pushed.
I like this post and have upvoted it. But,
strikes me as a fairly cheap linguistic trick—you could deploy it with equal efficacy regardless of whether there can meaningfully be said to be “time” before the Big Bang. Now, the fact that it is a linguistic trick itself illustrates a sort of “ways words can be wrong” meta-point, which could be valuable in unrelated circumstances, but your other analogies are much better.
It isn’t just a linguistic trick: it is pointing out that there exist ways in which a dimension can end, even if the particular way is nothing like the other.
Are there any relativistic space-time geometries which would have the beginning of time broadly resembling one pole of a hypersphere? Just wondering how far the analogy could be pushed.
Yup.
I thought the inquiry referred more to what was the cause of the Big Bang than to what was happening across the y-axis of the timeline.
If I’m not mistaken, we don’t know yet?
Or have we concluded that the Big Bang is some kind of uncaused event?
Well put. As was the analogy itself; I found it quite helpful personally and it’s my favorite part of this article.
It still shows that the question isn’t necessarily meaningful.